Thinking Out Loud
by blak-cat23
Summary: In one night, María realizes the difference in her feelings for her two friends.


**Note**: I liiiiiive. Here's something I thought about while driving back to school after Thanksgiving. I'm still open for requests btw.

The song had been beautiful and done more than caught her attention. She went in and out of awareness, half the time just watching him, the other half giggling at how ridiculous he was. They were both ridiculous really, but she did her best not to notice that she scolded Joaquín for the same thing Manolo was doing now which was earning a blush.

And then she almost kissed him. She really, almost kissed him.

"Did you really think it was going to be that easy?"

He was a breath away from her before she giggled, watching him tumble to the ground. She quickly caught his guitar. The same one, paint job and all. There were pieces glued back on, scratches, one of the tuning pegs had been replaced. But the guitar was still very much in one piece, and her inscription was the most preserved part. She held tight to it. It smelled like him.

Down below Manolo, drunk from his fall (and probably the bar if Joaquín's stories of rescuing Manolo from a bar fight more than once were to be believed) wobbled a bit.

"I kinda did," he slurred out.

Then María let out not a giggle, but a real full laugh. Not at Manolo, but at the fun of it all. This is what she wanted to come home to, Manolo and Joaquin and just laughter, not formal parties, not _corridas_, and certainly not marriage proposals. And it did not slip her mind that Manolo had not asked.

"Hold on," she said. "I'll be right down."

She didn't know what she was going to do down there. She'd give him the guitar back at least. Perhaps they'd go for a walk and he could fill her in. Reintroduced to each other as the may have been during the bullfight, she hadn't truly looked him in the eye until he was climbing up her balcony. She'd get away from the party for a while, she considered bringing Chuy to see if he remembered his one time owner at all but she very suddenly and very surely decided she wanted to be alone with Manolo.

Her father, of course, had different plans.

There on bended knee was Joaquín, looking nervous and flushed holding out a ring she was certain her father picked himself. The crowed party was suddenly and she gripped Manolo's guitar so hard she heard the wood groan a bit.

Joaquín stumbled out a proposal and topped it off with the oh so important permission from her father to marry. She was fuming. She may very well have been making Manolo a new guitar if her father had not said:

"But who else can protect us from Chakal?"

Later in life, when she sat down to think about it, she realized it was nothing more than blackmail. Her father wanted to protect the town, she knew this, but it felt a great deal like being married off and she held up the guitar in her hands like a shield.

But then again, they both had a point. Joaquín was a decorated captain, a strategic genius, and a good warrior. Their marriage would station him here, her father would be safe, the children in the orphanage would be safe. And Manolo, he would be safe too.

"I…"

That's when the door opened, Pepé had Manolo upright but still very much out of it. He gave a squeal when he saw the scene and pushed Manolo into the room. He caught himself on Joaquín's shoulder and blinked many times with the goofiest grin in the world. And María caught herself smiling again.

"What'd I miss?" he said.

It was then that Joaqín noticed the guitar that María was quickly trying to hide. Joaquín looked between her and Manolo, and she watched conclusions jump across his face. She shouldn't feel guilty about holding the guitar, nothing had happened, and yet her cheeks burned under Joaquín's accusatory gaze.

"Did he propose too?" he demanded.

"No!" María quickly blurted out, doing her best to avoid disaster. But still, a tiny butterfly in her stomach, slowly blossoming into many had to ask: "Were you going too?"

Why had she asked that? She didn't want to be saddled with marriage, she didn't want to enter into any relationship. And yet marrying Joaquín felt very much like being locked away from…

Manolo, unsurprisingly, was clueless. He gained control of his swaying head a bit and focused his eyes on the ring in Joaquín' hand.

And from there it all tumbled out of control. Joaquín and Manolo were back to their old games. Not only was it embarrassing to watch her name tossed between the two of them like a snowball but she felt a twinge of fear. They were grown men now, harmless as they seemed to each other, any second a real fight could break out. She wouldn't watch either of them bloody and bruise each other over her.

So she pulled out a sword and stepped between them, or was it in front of Manolo?

* * *

><p>María spent the first fifteen minutes of her walk with Joaquín trying to push Manolo's hurt face out of her head. And that was perhaps the big difference between them, where Joaquín was angered by having a rival, Manolo was hurt by it. His self esteem had never been robust, and certainly not where Joaquín was concerned. But still, he'd grown into a fine man, a very handsome man, if she admitted it.<p>

And apparently others did too. Joaquín had called him a pretty boy and mentioned some group of teenage girls in town followed him around in bars listening to him play at odd hours and worshiped at his first bullfight. María wondered if he ever paid them attention, perhaps he even…

No, what he did with his time (and his body) was none of her concern, despite the sharp twinge in her stomach at the image of him walking with a faceless girl.

"But you know all about that don't you?" Joaquín said.

"I don't know anything about that!" she said quickly, pushing the thought of her self walking hand-in-hand with Manolo away.

"You don't know about libraries?" he said.

"Oh! Yes, _lo siento_," she said. "I was distracted. Go on, please."

He looked perturbed at losing his audience but quickly dove back into the tale of rushing into a burning library to rescue a priceless collection of archives on the history of Distrito Federal.

She tried to pay attention, she really truly did. But nearly ever sentence out of his mouth started with I or me (which was no grammatically correct way to start a sentence). And she kept checking in on thoughts of Manolo, every bar they past she gave a look to see if he was inside and she listened for his guitar.

She wrote him once a week while at school, and Joaquín too, but she learned very quickly her father was not passing her letters to him. So in despair she stopped writing to either of them. And she'd thought often of who they'd be when she saw them again. She missed them terribly, even with Chuy oinking at her side night after night.

She dreamt once she married Joaquín, some strange older version of him her mind had cooked up in the absence of knowing what he looked like. She'd also dreamt she married Manolo. Both times waking up had left her in nothing but confusion. They say you dream of your desires and your fears, so which was which?

Joaquín began a story of how he delivered a full litter of puppies when she thought: _I should have let Manolo kiss me. _

And she turned the deepest shade of red a face could turn. For a second she feared she had said it out loud but Joaquín kept going. She regretted the thought but then she didn't, because perhaps it was the key to figure it all out. She let the scene play out in her head, she let Manolo kiss her, she pulled him up and onto the balcony and into her room, they shut the doors behind them.

And then what happened? They're caught kissing by Joaquín or her father? Things go farther than decency should let them? Or perhaps they just sit there talking while he strums on the guitar. It was frightening just how much all the scenarios appealed to her (well, getting walked in on did so less than the others). And here with Joaquín she wanted Manolo to interrupt every possibly scenario that could transpire.

"And this one," he was on to his metals now. "Was for rescuing a nun."

This couldn't go on. It wasn't fair to Joaquín to let him keep trying, it wasn't fair to Manolo to lie to him, and it wasn't fair to María to let herself be locked up. But was what she felt for Manolo enough to see it through or was she simply crushing on the handsome man her childhood best friend had become?

No, she'd watched him alone in the arena. His showmanship was charming because he knew it was for everyone else's benefit, he hated being the center of attention. He didn't kill bulls because he was compassionate and brave not to. And he sang just the same alone as he did when surrounded by people: like no one was listening but him, because he sang only for himself and from himself and what others want didn't matter.

She'd been dissecting him all night. She was not swooning over a flyer of his _corrida_, this was something else entirely.

"Well, thank you for this very informative talk. About you," she said, arriving at her door.

And damn Joaquín for making one last good case as he pulled out her bonnet. Sincerity was within him, he could think of others, and maybe he had the potential to be the man Manolo was.

But he wasn't Manolo and for some reason that was important.

She promised him she'd think about his proposal and shut the door behind her in a breathless sigh and still heated cheeks.

* * *

><p>Instead of falling sleep and waking herself before sunrise, she'd stayed up. Mainly because she could not sleep if she tried, too much adrenaline was pumping through her at the thought of her and Manolo alone together in the dark.<p>

She looked at old pictures of them, when Manolo was gawky and flashed toothy grins. As she flipped through the photos it became apparent very quickly that in each and every picture she and Manolo were looking at each other. Sometimes it was directly, sometimes it was simply a side-eye glance. And with that she calmed a bit, this was ten years in the making and all the tension built up from time apart was bubbling. She tried to let it out in waves but instead it wanted to burst all at once.

There was no timeline in which the events of tonight would end platonically. If he tried to kiss her again she would not stop him, she thought she might even try to kiss him herself if he didn't do it fast enough.

"I'm in trouble, Chuy," she sighed, looking over at him fast asleep in his bed.

She refused to admit her emotions for him, not out loud. When the time came, if even then she could not use that very dangerous word she'd find a way to show him. Because she was growing more and more certain with each hour that shaved away the time. She was saying no to Joaquín because she wanted to know what it would be like to kiss Manolo, or perhaps even hear him propose.

Would she say yes? It certainly would not be no.

When the morning twilight finally made its first appearances on the edges of the mountains she crept outside. From above the stars still out looked almost watchful, as if they were betting on her.


End file.
